In 2013, a Hasidic filmmaker took the world by storm with her critically acclaimed feature length film, Fill the Void. It was distributed by Sony Pictures and premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Its writer-director, Rama Burstein, is a hasidic baalas teshuva, whose newest effort, The Wedding Plan, comes out this weekend (it opens May 12 in […]

  Asher Blinkoff is still years away from his bar mitzvah, but he may clinch his first Emmy this weekend. Taking Flight, an animated short that has been nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award features the voice talents of eight-year-old Asher Blinkoff, the actor son of 2014 Orthodox Jewish All Star Saul Blinkoff. Asher’s previous […]

  Read The Groundbreaking Orthodox Film Story That’s Now An Award Finalist The Haredi world is generally viewed as an insular patriarchal community that shuns movies, but a fledgling, shadow film industry has been growing quietly for a decade within the confines of this improbable universe. These flicks — dozens of them — are produced, […]

Having been voted New York’s hippest rabbi (an honor which along with a Metro Card may get me to Midtown) and serving as the rabbi to Brooklyn’s trendsetting Pratt Institute, I find myself in a constant search to remain hip with the ‘kids.’ So when it came to planning this year’s perfect Purim party, I […]

This week’s big new big budget movie release Assassin’s Creed brings the popular action-adventure video game to the screen. In it, a man played by Michael Fassbender uses new technology to uncover his “genetic memories” of a previous life as a skillful challenger to an oppressive, evil organization. While this story is fantasy, every culture […]

Two Religious Women Take World Thai Boxing Titles Both 18 and religious Jews, Nili Block and Sarah Abraham won gold medals in international competition in Thailand. Both girls take kosher food along when traveling to meets, and consulted with a rabbi about how to handle bouts on the Sabbath. Esther Jungreis, Known As the Jewish […]